The role of the manager in the conversion of tacit to explicit knowledge

As today's modern organizations seek to harness the rapid advances of technology and new knowledge increases exponentially, the successful organization strains to come to grips with the sheer volume of knowledge. Companies are struggling to adapt to the new knowledge economy and most organizations believe that knowledge workers hold the key to their success. In this fast-paced economy, knowledge is the currency of organizational net worth. Managers inside organizations must become increasingly more adept at handling knowledge in order to ensure organizational survivability. This study explores the knowledge conversion process from two distinct perspectives: (1) how the manager's role relates to the conversion process between tacit and explicit knowledge, and the meaning the manager assigns to or associates with the knowledge conversion process; and (2) how the manager identifies and describes both tacit and explicit knowledge and the specific attributes or characteristics assigned to each knowledge type. The concepts of tacit and explicit knowledge are grounded in the work of Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) and Habermas' (1971, 1984, 1987a, 1987b) theories on the three types of knowledge---technical, practical, and emancipatory. Rooted in the rich tradition of organizational learning, a conceptual framework and literature review analyzes the concepts of key theorists in the organizational knowledge field. Unique to naturalistic inquiry, the proposed study employs qualitative methods of data collection. Specifically, the research will adhere to a phenomenological methodology that involves in-depth interviews in order to discover the essence of the manager's experience with the tacit/explicit knowledge conversion process.